Paperback Indexes

The first couple of books I indexed using PDF Indexing Software were a real learning curve, but there’s nothing like having to repeat the same steps over and over again to help get you comfortable with using new software. I’ve created indexes for all of my paperbacks, and am working with a couple of indie authors reach out to me to index their nonfiction books for them.

There are multiple elements for creating an index. It’s not just about mastering the software, you also need to know and adhere to industry standards, and you need to be able to think like a reader so that you can determine the best words and terms to index.

Table of Contents vs. Index

Apart from the obvious distinction that your table of contents appears at the front-matter section of the book and your index appears at the end, these two content lists have different purposes.

Your table of contents will contain your chapter heading titles and whatever subheadings you decide to choose, whereas your index will include individual words, terms, and word-strings to help your audience with that next level of detail.

The goal of your table and contents and index is to help your reader find what they’re looking for, so only include information that is helpful and useful to them.

Creating a Custom List

The best way to create a custom list for your paperbacks is to look through the table of contents, chapter headings, and all other headings and sub-headings you’ve used throughout your book. These key text elements showcase the core concepts and ideas you’re trying to communicate in your book, so it goes without saying that you’d want many of these to appear in your index to help your readers find that core content again. Some headings are used to break out large sections of content into smaller pieces, and may not necessarily need to be part of your index.

Although many professional indexers say an author can’t index their own book, I think that’s incorrect. Who knows your content better than you? Who knows the key points your trying to get across in your book’s content? You’ve already been through your content multiple times, and taken the time to identify chapter headers, and all your sub-headings, so if you decided to index your own book, use those words and terms as the basis of your book’s index.

One of the professional guidelines is that you don’t use a Table of Content term in your index, because that’s a duplication of terms. But, you can use specific words within these terms to index. For example, if my chapter title was How to Self-Publish your Paperback – I wouldn’t add “How to Self-Publish your Paperback” to my index, instead I’d index “Self-Publish” and “Paperback”.

I created an index for book one in my How to Write and Self-Publish a Book series, and I used that table of contents, headings, and sub-headings approach to pick out the key terms I wanted to index, and to use as my custom list to load into PDF Index Generator.

But these aren’t the only terms I incorporated into my index. I also ran the index generating tool without an include/exclude filters, so that it indexed the entire book for all words, and I used this list to pick out additional terms that would make it easy for readers to locate all mentions of this content within the book.

Once I’d identified this second list of words, I added them to my custom list so that each time I make minor edits to my book, I can just run the same indexing custom list over it to generate an updated index (in case any of the page numbers have changed).

If I was making major edits with brand new content, I’d run the indexing tool over the new section to pick out the words to index, or review the sections manual to pick out the words or terms not already captured.

As well as indexing terms, you may also need to create See Also references, or sub-headings to link multiple similar or related terms together.

• One of the great aspects of the PDF Index Generator is that you can edit the layout and style of the index generated and attached to your PDF file. I favor a clean and simple layout for my indexes, so that it’s distraction-free for my readers, and here’s a screenshot of one of the index page spreads for my book.

I made the indexing process seem quick and easy, but it does take some thought and effort to choose the terms that will help your readers navigate your book. Index too many irrelevant words and your index will become overwhelming, and index too few and your index won’t be a useful tool for navigating your book.